In 1789 the nation's first Congress, meeting in New York, adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. (Ten of them became the Bill of Rights.)

In 1890 Congress established Yosemite National Park. Also in 1890, Mormon President Wilford Woodruff issued a manifesto formally renouncing the practice of polygamy.

In 1897 author William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Miss.

In 1912 Ford Motor Co. established an eight-hour workday and five-day workweek.

In 1957, with 300 Army troops standing guard because of unruly crowds, nine black students were escorted to their classes in Little Rock (Ark.) Central High School.

In 1973 the three-man crew of Skylab 2 made a safe splashdown in the Pacific Ocean after a record 59 days in orbit.

In 1978 a Pacific Southwest jetliner and a private plane collided over San Diego, killing 144 people.

In 1980 a tentative agreement on a contract was reached on the 67th day of an actors strike that delayed the start of the fall television season.

In 1982 hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Tel Aviv called for the resignations of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon in the wake of a massacre of Palestinians in Beirut, Lebanon.

In 1993 three U.S. soldiers in Somalia were killed when their helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

In 1996 seven people died as Israeli troops clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians angered by Israel's decision to open an archeological tunnel near Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

In 1998 the death toll from Hurricane Georges, after its four-day rampage through the Caribbean, rose to 400. (More than half of the deaths and much of the billion-dollar destruction were in the Dominican Republic.)